Education in Rome fell as the Empire gradually fell. The shrinking dominions, high taxes, increasing poverty, fewer slaves available for teaching, and a decreasing population. Also as the empire grew, the demand to be literate and have a high education got smaller and smaller. The availability of education became less too. Eventually only rich nobles would get a good education.
Freed slaves opened private schools for the parents of the alumni. The parents learned the primary school education at a much more affordable price. These schools were pretty much the only schools plebs could go to because they weren't as expensive, the teachers didn’t get paid that much and had to have two jobs a lot.
People didn’t get very much education because Rome was participating in war so much. They would learn the military arts during war, but then would spend time on agriculture when they weren’t in war.
Since education was expensive, an area of study was only learned as long as it had a high sense of purpose.
Grammaticus were the teachers that taught at grammar schools. Students learned grammar, literature, simple literary criticism, Latin, Greek, enunciation, (because of the significance of public speaking) rhetoric, music, and geometry. This school came after primary school. It was expensive, only children in families with sufficient economic means could go to these schools. So usually practicians.
There was no law requiring people to get educated/go to school. The government had nothing to do with education. So there was almost no public or free education.
Most poor people didn’t get educated except for what their job was.
Parents mostly taught their kids everything they know unless they were rich. Rich nobles would hire tutors. The tutors were usually Greek slaves. The slave tutors were very expensive.
There weren’t really any schools until after the Roman Empire began. They were just open room, like a shop, or in a gallery attached to a public building. They would have a roof to protect people inside from rain, but it was open towards the street. The only furniture were benches. So they schools were built to the bare minimum.
Elementary and schools were open to pretty much anyone because they were the lowest level of education you could get in a school. They were also the cheapest.
Books were too expensive so children learned through memorization and repetition. Students wrote on a wax tablet with a stylus because paper was expensive too.
Girls only got a primary education, if they got any. They were taught domestic skills at home. Their education depended on their level in society and wealth.
High levels of education in Rome was more for a status symbol than anything else.
Elementary schools taught math, and how to read and write.
If you couldn’t learn the job you were going to have, you would be an apprentice under somebody.
Ludi was like a play school. Children learned basic social and rudimentary skills.
School was usually from dawn until dusk.
Emphasis was placed on students answering correctly. What teachers considered as a reward for doing well was the absence of a beating.
Today
Many students without means to pay tuition are admitted into schools.
You can get loans and grants to help pay for school. You can also have a work-study situation set up for you.
People might go to college for one thing, but cannot pursue that career because they either can’t get that job, or it doesn’t pay enough to pay off loans so they have to get a different job.
55% of board members at colleges say that it’s too expensive compared to its value. 62% say that their institution isn't too expensive, that it costs what it should.
66% of board members of higher education institutions say that college betters somebody’s life, but only 56% said that higher education does.
Vast spending and building was funded by taxpayers and donations. Today there aren’t enough resources to help pay for the schools as we used to be able to, and the schools keep spending money they don’t have. The people in charge of spending the money spend it to keep administrators, alumni, students, and faculty happy. People overspend and over build and then find out they don’t have enough money to pay for the school.
Schools spend a lot of money on athletics, rather than academics, which is what most people need. For example: Ohio Universities football team got into the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl game. OU was worried that not enough people would attend, and didn’t want to be embarrassed. They offered several hundred students transportation from cities in Ohio. They also paid for lodging and tickets, That whole deal cost $40. The promotion cost $150,000, which was more than their annual subsidy from Ohio University Press. Another example is the new $10 million indoor practice facility that OU is building.
The cost of higher education, keeps getting more and more expensive, so the amount of loans students borrow does too.
Cash flow problems are causing schools all over the U.S. to downsize teachers and staff, reduce salaries, and cut budgets.
Last year tuition, fees, room, and board cost about $38,500 at private colleges. That price grew $15,000 over the past decade. At public 4 year colleges it cost about $17,000, which grew $8,000 over the past decade.
Solutions
The Pell Grant program was set up by Obama. It increases aid to low and middle income students. It gave more than 10 million students $40 billion in financial aid. Pell Grant also made it easier to request financial aid. (today) The flaw with the system is that mediocre schools and students are getting the federal aid and loans. Those schools might have poor odds of creating economically successful graduates.
Getting more people to go to college, adjusting the price, and quality to college would help.
Obama made a contest for states where they would submit cost controlling ideas. The state with the best ideas get a $1 billion grant.
Questions
What are some of the changes colleges are making today to lower the costs?
Where does most of the money you pay for college go to? (Ex. professors, the campus etc.)
Do you think the benefits of college outweigh the debt you can get into because of the high cost?
Contacts
Richard Perez-Pena to me:
Miss Feil,
These are all good questions - so good, in fact, that plenty of people earn a living trying to answer them, and their answers don't always agree with each other. I'll take them one at a time.
1. What are some of the changes colleges are making to lower the costs today?
Unfortunately, there's no simple answer to this.
Across all colleges, one of the biggest changes is that schools rely more and more on part-time professors, called adjunct professors. They don't earn as much per class as full-time professors, and they don't get benefits like health care. This has been true at both public and private colleges.
State colleges have been squeezed very hard in the last five years by state budget cuts. In many cases, the increased income they get from raising the tuition they charge to students hasn't covered the decline in state aid. So to the student, it looks like the costs are going up, but to the college, it doesn't. They've just traded one source of revenue for another. In fact, if you adjust for inflation and the number of students, the average amount of money state colleges spend per student has gone down, not up, in the last few years. (Of course, that can vary a lot from state to state.)
So state schools have found all sorts of ways to cut costs. Many of them just have reduced the number of professors, so they offer fewer classes, or class sizes are bigger. One of the biggest complaints from students in recent years has been that it's harder to graduate in four years, because they can't get the classes they need.
President Obama has proposed a competition among state schools, to award money to those that come up with the best ways of cutting costs without cutting education.
The picture is very different for private schools, and they haven't cut costs nearly as much. Until recently, they've found that they can keep raising tuition and some people will pay it, though many colleges think they've pretty much reached the limit of that strategy. A lot of private schools, particularly the wealthier ones, have been on a 20-year facilities binge, realizing that to compete for top students, they needed better dorms, better gyms, better food, better labs, wifi everywhere, etc. A lot of that building has been put on "pause" in the last few years, but it might resume.
Some people believe that the college ranking systems, like U. S. News & World Report's, actually reward colleges for spending money and punish them for finding more efficient ways of doing things. It's an interesting idea.
A lot of colleges are getting into offering online courses. For the most part, these don't offer credit, but it's only a matter of time before a lot of them do. That would be a major step toward lowering costs - and possibly a threat to the colleges' survival. The ground is shifting under them in ways we can't yet predict.
And here's one more wrinkle: President Obama has greatly increased federal aid to low- and middle-income students, through the Pell Grant program. Liberals say that makes college more affordable to more people. Conservatives say it just encourages the colleges to keep raising their prices.
2. Where does most of the money you pay for college go to? (Ex. professors, the campus etc.)
The primary expense of running a college, like most enterprises, is labor - that is, people. It's not just professors - there are many other employees, from the people who scrub floors to the people who ask alumni for money. Each one has a salary and benefits.
3. Do you think the benefits of college outweigh the debt you can get into? Why or why not?
I think extreme debt can usually be avoided. If you have your heart set on a particular school, and you insist on going there regardless of the cost, the location and other factors, then yes, debt is a real danger. But most people have available to them relatively low-cost options like state schools or commuter schools, and even more expensive colleges can give a lot of financial aid if you do some shopping around. So the student has to be a smart consumer.
But to answer your question, yes, absolutely I think it's worth it. It's true that for some walks of life, a college education isn't required, and some people would be just fine with high school and maybe some vocational training. But most higher-paying careers require more education, and having that education opens far more possibilities to you down the road. I think it also just opens your eyes to knowledge and experiences that are very valuable (even if you never make a penny from them), and it opens your minds to habits of inquiry and skepticism that are priceless, no matter what you end up doing.
Ancient Rome
Today
Solutions
Questions
Contacts
Miss Feil,
These are all good questions - so good, in fact, that plenty of people earn a living trying to answer them, and their answers don't always agree with each other. I'll take them one at a time.
1. What are some of the changes colleges are making to lower the costs today?
Unfortunately, there's no simple answer to this.
Across all colleges, one of the biggest changes is that schools rely more and more on part-time professors, called adjunct professors. They don't earn as much per class as full-time professors, and they don't get benefits like health care. This has been true at both public and private colleges.
State colleges have been squeezed very hard in the last five years by state budget cuts. In many cases, the increased income they get from raising the tuition they charge to students hasn't covered the decline in state aid. So to the student, it looks like the costs are going up, but to the college, it doesn't. They've just traded one source of revenue for another. In fact, if you adjust for inflation and the number of students, the average amount of money state colleges spend per student has gone down, not up, in the last few years. (Of course, that can vary a lot from state to state.)
So state schools have found all sorts of ways to cut costs. Many of them just have reduced the number of professors, so they offer fewer classes, or class sizes are bigger. One of the biggest complaints from students in recent years has been that it's harder to graduate in four years, because they can't get the classes they need.
President Obama has proposed a competition among state schools, to award money to those that come up with the best ways of cutting costs without cutting education.
The picture is very different for private schools, and they haven't cut costs nearly as much. Until recently, they've found that they can keep raising tuition and some people will pay it, though many colleges think they've pretty much reached the limit of that strategy. A lot of private schools, particularly the wealthier ones, have been on a 20-year facilities binge, realizing that to compete for top students, they needed better dorms, better gyms, better food, better labs, wifi everywhere, etc. A lot of that building has been put on "pause" in the last few years, but it might resume.
Some people believe that the college ranking systems, like U. S. News & World Report's, actually reward colleges for spending money and punish them for finding more efficient ways of doing things. It's an interesting idea.
A lot of colleges are getting into offering online courses. For the most part, these don't offer credit, but it's only a matter of time before a lot of them do. That would be a major step toward lowering costs - and possibly a threat to the colleges' survival. The ground is shifting under them in ways we can't yet predict.
And here's one more wrinkle: President Obama has greatly increased federal aid to low- and middle-income students, through the Pell Grant program. Liberals say that makes college more affordable to more people. Conservatives say it just encourages the colleges to keep raising their prices.
2. Where does most of the money you pay for college go to? (Ex. professors, the campus etc.)
The primary expense of running a college, like most enterprises, is labor - that is, people. It's not just professors - there are many other employees, from the people who scrub floors to the people who ask alumni for money. Each one has a salary and benefits.
3. Do you think the benefits of college outweigh the debt you can get into? Why or why not?
I think extreme debt can usually be avoided. If you have your heart set on a particular school, and you insist on going there regardless of the cost, the location and other factors, then yes, debt is a real danger. But most people have available to them relatively low-cost options like state schools or commuter schools, and even more expensive colleges can give a lot of financial aid if you do some shopping around. So the student has to be a smart consumer.
But to answer your question, yes, absolutely I think it's worth it. It's true that for some walks of life, a college education isn't required, and some people would be just fine with high school and maybe some vocational training. But most higher-paying careers require more education, and having that education opens far more possibilities to you down the road. I think it also just opens your eyes to knowledge and experiences that are very valuable (even if you never make a penny from them), and it opens your minds to habits of inquiry and skepticism that are priceless, no matter what you end up doing.
Citations
Pillai, Maya. Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com, 09 May 0010. Web. 14 Jan. 2013. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ancient-roman-education.html>.
"University Financial Crises: Lessons From Ancient Rome." Innovations. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2013. <http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/university-financial-crises-lessons-from-ancient-rome/28169>.
"Rome Exposed - Education." Rome Exposed - Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013. <http://www.classicsunveiled.com/romel/html/education.html>.
"Education in Ancient Roman - Crystalinks." Education in Ancient Roman - Crystalinks. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2013. <http://www.crystalinks.com/romeducation.html>.
"Ancient Roman Education." Ancient Roman Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2013. <http://www.mariamilani.com/ancient_rome/ancient_roman_education.htm>.
"Cradles of Education - Ancient Rome." Cradles of Education - Ancient Rome. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2013. <http://www.foreigncredits.com/Articles/cradles-of-education-ancient-rome-110.htm>.